Soft Spot 11:14 PM

Always had a thing for the apocalyptic.

via Pink Tentacle

Hisaharu Motoda’s “Neo-Ruins” series of lithographs depict the cityscape of a post-apocalyptic Tokyo, where familiar streets lie deserted, the buildings are crumbling and weeds grow from the broken pavement. The antique look of the lithographic medium effectively amps up the eeriness of the futuristic setting. “In Neo-Ruins I wanted to capture both a sense of the world’s past and of the world’s future,” says Motoda on his website.

[Link: Hisaharu Motoda]

Interesting 9:23 PM

I did find it strange that that the photos from the last post had been found on Corbis. Words to keep in mind as I, erm, handle the situation here. This was written in 2000, and I wonder what he thinks of the system now. From The Digital Journalist:

What Corbis Did to Sygma
(or, We Had to Destroy the Agency in Order to Save It)

by Allan Tannenbaum
an ex-Sygma photojournalist

... In addition, in order to gain market share against Getty and other competitors, Corbis is cutting prices it charges to license photos. This results in lower sales reports for all photographers. Despite the efficiencies of modern digital image transmission, Corbis still wants a third of foreign office sales, leaving photographers with only 33% of a sale in France, not 50%. Corbis is attempting to make mass deals with magazines like Time, where the magazine would get unlimited use of Corbis photographs for one yearly fee, thus saving both parties enormous accounting costs. The effect on photographers' income would be devastating. How long before there is a Corbis button on Microsoft Internet Explorer, where you can get free photographic wallpaper or screensavers? Corbis is trying to be a one-stop photo shopping mall for everything from $3.95 term paper illustrations, to royalty-free stock images, to cheap framed prints to photojournalism!

... In the short time since I left, I found that there are lots of options, such as agencies that are managed on a human scale, a more personal basis, run by people who respect photography and photographers. There are many at magazines who don't like the way Corbis does business, and who like to work directly with photographers. The Internet is as accessible to individual photographers willing to use it as it is to Corbis. There will be new alignments, organizations, and opportunities in this time of flux. The spin-doctors at Corbis try to infer that the photographers who are dissatisfied with Corbis aren't willing to change in the digital age. Many of us have been using computers for years - I've been online since 1985. We are all well versed in scanning and sending digital photo files, have worked with digital cameras, and use the Internet for everything. We photojournalists have always been adaptable - we just don't want to adapt to our own extinction.

IVORY COAST, Bouaké : A picture taken 06 October 2002 by Agence France Presse French photographer Georges Gobet shows Ivory Coast rebels threatening a loyalist fighter they have just captured on a patrol on the perimeter of occupied Bouake. GEORGES GOBET/AFP

I think I came across this photo in 2002 or 2003. I'm not sure how I stumbled upon it, and it was only a while later that I found out it had won a prize in the WPP awards (Spot News, 1st Prize). I've always thought that to be unfortunate in the sense that the award usurped the original context of the image. Even now, when I search the internet, I find this photo being used in articles about WPP and not about the conflict in Ivory Coast -- apparently the award is more newsworthy than war.

I guess all photos that win a major award are destined for this fate, and I'm not sure how photographers feel about it.

I thought about this photo after watched Johnny Mad Dog yesterday, a film about child soldiers in an unnamed African country. I found out today out that the young actors were actually former child soldiers, adding to the realism of the film which was greatly enhanced by the photographs shown during the end credits - images of child soldiers in Liberia, taken by French photographer Patrick Robert.

I'm not sure if the last photo was placed last on purpose, but when I saw it I couldn't help but gasp:

What a fantastic way to reclaim the context of an image which had been utterly destroyed by United Colors of Benetton. The image had been used for one of their ads in 1992, and this is all the company's website says:

The image of a black soldier who, taken from behind with a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder, claps a human thigh-bone represents a terrible vision that arouses anxious questions about colonialism, racism and cultural poverty

They were right. I did have anxious questions, such as: Who is the photographer? Where was this photo taken? And when? Who's the person in the photo? What the hell is going on? Questions, I suppose, I was encouraged to ask but not be given the answer to. Here's the original caption (more photos to be found on Corbis):

Civil War in Liberia - June 05, 1990, Gborplay, Liberia.

A young recruit for the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) grasps a human leg bone while at a training camp in Gborplay, Liberia. Responding to years of government corruption and oppression, in 1989 the NPFL launched a revolt against President Samuel Doe, seizing control of much of Liberia and plunging the country into massive civil war until 1996.

I seriously have no idea how UCB managed to render such an photograph into a stock image.

Assortments 9:06 PM

All from FFFFOUND!

People 10:13 PM

From latest issue of lens culture:

Women at Work
photographs and text by
Joel Gräfnings

All the chosen subjects are women who work in male-dominant environments and professions. The professions are also all of a nature that demands work uniforms in the form of protective clothing. I’ve taken two photos of each subject, one before the work-shift and one after...

The picture pairs play an important role in showing the change in the subjects, not only through the most obvious – the clothes getting dirty – but also through more subtle changes in expressions and so forth. I’m trying to grasp something that concerns the change in gender roles in our society. The uniforms of the male-dominant professions hide the femininity of these women and their appearance is quite androgynous.

Everyone My Brother Knows in Girdwood, Alaska
photographs and text by
Laura Domela

They say people live in Alaska for a variety of reasons – maybe they were raised there and they choose to stay close to home, maybe they go there to get closer to nature, perhaps they move there in an attempt to get off the grid, seeking refuge from some aspect of more mainstream society. Whatever their motivations, these people form a unique tribe – one with a quirky combination of self-imposed semi-isolation and worldly awareness.

Negatives Are To Be Stored
photographs by
Stefania Gurdowa

Eleven years ago, in the attic of a tenement house in the town of Debica, more than 1,000 damaged glass negative plates were discovered. Most of them depicted expressive portraits of anonymous individuals who lived in the neighborhood during the 20s and 30s...

Only a fragment of her art endures, together with a question without an answer: who hid a collection of glass plates behind a wall in the attic of her workshop in Debica? Perhaps it was her own decision to preserve them this way. As a responsible professional, she must have been aware of the rule that “negatives are to be stored”.

Antidote to Modern Living 10:40 AM

It is slightly embarassing, but I am rather obsessed with Julian Germain's work right now. I'm only mentioning one here, but I expect I'll be raving about the others soon.

I had the sheer dumb luck of spending a bit of time with Julian while he was here recently. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a person of such gentle nature produced the most tender and affectionate work I've ever seen.

From 'For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness'- a beautiful book published by SteidlMack in 2005.

"I met Charles Albert Lucien Snelling on a Saturday in April, 1992. He lived in a typical two up two down terraced house amongst many other two up two down terraced houses… It was yellow and orange. In that respect it was totally different from every other house on the street…. ….Charlie was a simple, gentle, man. He loved flowers and the names of flowers. He loved colour and surrounded himself with colour. He loved his wife. Without ever trying or intending to, he showed me that the most important things in life cost nothing at all. He was my antidote to modern living."

Julian mentioned that Charlie was everyone's favourite. I'm sure that there's a good intellectual explanation for this, but I'll not particularly interested in that. For me, his work with Charlie is particularly painful and bittersweet. I have only one regret in my life so far -- not an exaggeration -- that I did not get around to photographing my great-grandmother before she passed. She was my antidote to modern living, and I had utterly failed to preserve the memory of her. She deserved that, at the very least.

Too much of a good thing 11:53 PM

I always liked the idea of using the same object in order to impose the idea of equality.

The Red Couch
Horst Wackerbarth

From Artlurker:

Billed as a gallery of mankind, the project (which has been in development some thirty years) presents a dynamic cross section of the human race with each subject photographed on or with some component of the couch in settings whose geography and manifest impact vary as much as their inhabitants’ respective careers or life stories.

Somehow I liked the project better in the earlier, smaller form of The Red Couch: A Portrait of America. Feels more intimate, in a way, and less vast.

And then there was the Pink Man series (1997-2004) by Manit Sriwanichpoom, although he used repetition for a totally different reason:

And Anay Mann used a foldable chair. The most politicised out of the three, it seems. But then again, what do I know. From Photoink gallery in New Delhi:

Equal Dreams: Portraits of Indians. (Photos from here)

There's another project lurking -- one which involved a pair of gold stilettos in various locations all over Europe, but for the life of me I simply cannot remember who did it or where I saw it.